Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 18, 2025
"You've only to ask for it and we'll send the old station buck-board across," he said, and the man began fumbling uneasily at his saddle-girths, and said something evasive about "giving trouble"; but when the Maluka afraid that a man's life might be the forfeit of another man's shrinking fear of causing trouble added that on second thoughts we would ride across as soon as horses could be brought in, he flushed hotly and stammered: "If you please, ma'am.
"Particularly when those men are chivalrous bushmen," I began, then hesitated, for, since reading the telegrams, my ideas of bush chivalry needed readjustment. "Particularly when those men are chivalrous bushmen," the Maluka agreed, with the merry twinkle in his eyes; for he perfectly understood the cause of the sudden breakdown.
Mac settled that difficulty by saying that "all hands could be put on to pluck birds. The place is stiff with 'em," he explained, showing what a simple matter it would be, after all. The Maluka turning out two cushions, a large and a smaller one, simplified matters even more. "A bird in the hand you know," he said, finding room for them in the swag.
But Dan "knew a chap once who could reckon it by the moon" and the Maluka felt inspired to work it out. "It's simple enough," he said. "The first Friday or is it Sunday? after the first full moon, AFTER the twenty-first of March." "Twenty-fifth, isn't it?" the Dandy asked, complicating matters from the beginning.
With that surging mob of cattle beside them, the Maluka and Dan had dismounted, and were trying to staunch the flow of blood, while black boys gathered round, and Jack and the Dandy, satisfied that the injuries were not "too serious," were leaning over from their saddles congratulating the old horse on having "got off so easy."
"Well?" he said again, "Me rainmaker, eh ?" and the Maluka shouted above the roar and din: "You're the boy for my money, Billy! Keep her going!" and Billy kept her going to such purpose that by sun-up the billabong was a banker, Cheon was moving over the face of the earth with the buoyancy of a child's balloon, and Billy had five inches of rain to his credit.
For bush hospitality is something better than the bare housing and feeding of guests, being just the simple sharing of our daily lives with a fellow-man a literal sharing of all that we have; of our plenty or scarcity, our joys or sorrows, our comforts or discomforts, our security or danger; a democratic hospitality, where all men are equally welcome, yet so refined in its simplicity and wholesomeness, that fulsome thanks or vulgar apologies have no part in it, although it was whispered among the bushfolk that those "down in their luck" learned that when the Maluka was filling tucker-bags, a timely word in praise of the missus filled tucker-bags to over-flowing.
The hard lines about his mouth were very marked just then, and the outstretched hand seemed fiercely defiant but the Maluka reading in it only a man's proud care for a comrade's honour, put it gently aside, saying: "We give no charity here; only hospitality to our guests. Surely no man would refuse that." They speak of a woman's delicate tact.
"If you'll be good enough," the Maluka added, "I should not leave here myself till all is completed." Unerringly the Maluka had read his man: no hint of his strength failing, but a favour asked, and with it a service for a woman.
We undoubtedly had, but thirty-three nights, or thereabouts, with the warm, bare ground for a bed, had made me indifferent to mattresses, and hearing that Dan became most hopeful of "getting her properly educated" yet. Cheon greeted us with his usual enthusiasm, and handed the Maluka a letter containing a request for a small mob of bullocks within three weeks.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking